Emma Pritchard
Almost one year after the Clarence Valley Regional Airport was chosen as the location to build a new Fire Control and Emergency Operations Centre, emergency services personnel gathered on-site to watch Member for Clarence Chris Gulaptis, NSW Nationals candidate for Clarence Richie Williamson, Clarence Valley Council (CVC) Mayor Ian Tiley, Minister for Emergency Services and Resilience Steph Cooke, and Rural Fire Service (RFS) Acting Deputy Commissioner Kelly Quandt come together on January 23 to formalise the announcement.
Describing the $8.5 million investment by the NSW Liberal and Nationals Government as very exciting, the Minister said the fit-for-purpose modern facility will provide volunteers with the essential resources required to help keep Clarence Valley communities safe.
“It was very important for us as a government coming out of the Black Summer bushfires in 2019-2020, that we looked to implement the recommendations of the bushfire inquiry,” she said.
“We had a look at the high-risk areas around NSW for improvement and investment in fire control centres wherever possible, co-located with an emergency operations centre.
“One of those locations is right here.”
The announcement last month follows an earlier one by the Minister in February 2022 when the Clarence Valley Regional Airport was first identified as the area to build the new premises.
“Now that we’ve got that (identification) it’s full steam ahead, and we’ll move into the detailed planning and design phase,” she said.
“We’ll work very closely with Clarence Valley Council (CVC), and then it will be onto construction, so we’ll be back here with shovels later in the year.”
NSW RFS Clarence Valley District Superintendent Stuart Watts welcomed the recent announcement, describing it as fantastic news for the Clarence Valley.
Superintendent Watts said emergency services have been operating from the Clarence Valley Fire Control Centre in Ulmarra for over 20 years, and now is the time to move forward and into a purpose-built facility which provides further room for future expansions.
Describing the announcement as nothing more than a warmed-up project which was already made public 12 months ago as part of a $71.5 million state-wide investment, the ALP candidate for Clarence Leon Ankersmit said it pales in significance to a previous decision that removed local emergency services command to centralised command centres in metropolitan areas by the same government.
“That decision had devastating effects during the recent disaster season, and this hub does not alleviate the problem of centralised emergency command,” he said.
“The fact that the Nationals need to re-announce this project that was already announced a year ago proves that they are completely out of new ideas.”